ARBOR PROFILE

OVERVIEW

Arbor School is an independent K-8 school located on 21-acres of wooded farmland, South of Portland and immediately East of Tualatin, Oregon. Founded in 1989, Arbor is a distinctive school in the Pacific Northwest, having developed a culture in which normative practices are eschewed. Arbor students learn in multi-age, team-taught classrooms and are evaluated through narrative reporting rather than grades. The curriculum is interdisciplinary and theme-based, with concepts spiraling up through the class levels, allowing students to encounter ideas and develop skills at increasing levels of complexity and refinement. Learning to think independently and deeply is prized. So too is the developing ability to apply understanding to novel problems, with opportunities for problem-solving threaded throughout the curriculum. 

The quality of human interactions, the focus on character, and the broadly-educating purposes of Arbor are among its most important hallmarks. Students remain with their teachers for two to three years and are known deeply by all faculty members by the time they graduate. The Arbor faculty is a close-knit group, meeting as a whole weekly and striving to maintain the pillars of pedagogy, curriculum, and humane values that support all work that is done with the students. 

Arbor is a strong community, one based on shared values and aspirations for the students, who are the school’s only reason for being. Students, teachers, and parents alike come to understand that they are essential parts of the whole. Practices such as weekly singing at assembly, a buddy program connecting olders and youngers, communal tending of classrooms and natural spaces on campus, and frequent celebrations characterize the active ways in which Arbor fosters close relationships and commitment to community. Parents form an essential cadre of volunteers at Arbor, often providing their expertise and generous help in classrooms. 

Arbor is predicated on a financial model that is unusual in independent schools, as tuition is designed to cover the operating budget without the requirement for annual fundraising. Furthermore, Arbor’s tuition is substantially lower than other independent schools in the Metro area. Arbor seeks to remain accessible and to model fiscal restraint, while offering an education that makes its students sought after by high schools.

Arbor’s governance model is likewise unusual. A small fiduciary board consisting of three voting members and two ex officio members (the Founding Director and the current Director) works closely together, providing a deep keel for stewardship of the school. A larger advisory board, the Friends of Arbor School, serves to provide wisdom for the questions the Director brings to it, and is especially useful as a forum for conversations about new undertakings. The Arbor Parent/Teacher group serves as a volunteer cadre within the school, dedicated to supporting Arbor in advancing the Director’s priorities. Arbor does not maintain a development office, a purposeful choice to keep administrative costs low and to avoid annual-giving appeals. 

The school is characterized by a flat hierarchy and a relatively small administrative team. The Director, Assistant Director, Admissions Director, Office Manager, Assistant Office Manager, Business Manager, and Caretaker work together alongside the faculty to administer the school’s programs and operations.

FACTS OF NOTE (2022-23)

Student Body: 190

Average class size (including faculty children, who attend tuition-free):

• Primary (K-1st): two classes of 18, each with a Head teacher, a shared Design teacher, and an Arbor Center for Teaching (ACT) Resident

• Junior (2nd-3rd): two classes of 20, each with a Head teacher, a shared Design teacher, a Science teacher, and an ACT Resident

• Intermediate (4th-5th): one class of 44, with 3 Head teachers, shared Design and Science teachers, an Assistant teacher, and an ACT Resident

• Senior (6th, 7th, 8th): 3 classes of 24, with 2 Humanities teachers, 2 Math teachers, shared Science and Design teachers, a Spanish teacher, and an ACT Resident

• All share a Music teacher, PE teacher, Librarian, Garden Educator, DEI Coordinator, and School Counselor

OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES

Arbor is devoted to growth in every realm. As a result, the school is a dynamic place, where change and continuity are valued in equal measure. Arbor has worked hard to create its large campus, with its woods, fields, streams, ponds, and gardens. Most of the buildings are remodeled structures, demonstrating Arbor’s commitment to creative reuse. The Library and the Gathering Center are two shared, purpose-built buildings. The former demonstrates the importance of books in Arbor students’ lives, and the latter emphasizes the centrality of community, celebration, and outreach.

In the years ahead, Arbor must continue to nurture a cadre of inventive, committed faculty members. The lengthy tenure of most Arbor teachers is evidence of their commitment, as well as the value the school places on developing growth opportunities for its faculty. 

The most important outreach arm at the school is the Arbor Center for Teaching. Through it, Arbor has developed connections with educators and principals in public schools throughout the Metro area. ACT’s commitment to diversifying the teacher workforce resulted in the creation of Fellowships for Teacher Residents. Attracting the finest applicants to our Teacher Resident program is a bi-annual opportunity.

Achieving the difficult balance of small school size, accessible tuition, ever-stronger faculty compensation, and maintenance of the school’s buildings and land will never get easier. But three decades of such a balance proves that it is possible. 

ARBOR SCHOOL PRIORITIES

• Cultivate deep consideration by faculty and staff of any contemplated change  to the curriculum, aligning those changes with the foundational principles of the school.

• Maintain Arbor’s culture in which teachers guide students to develop deep understanding, engaged thinking, active participation in learning, and commitment to interpersonal generosity and kindness.

• Focus attention on faculty capacity for invention of meaningful and well-structured project work.  

• Elevate the notion that each Arbor student is guided to grow personally as an individual within a community.

• Seek to re-invigorate efforts for Arbor students to engage with others beyond the school, building in them an ever-growing capacity to interact with regard for differences and variety. 

• Work actively to enhance diversity in the school community.

• Understand and respect the underlying financial model of the school, with its tuition-based operating budget and ethos of frugality.  Continue to balance and strengthen the accessibility of the school, while augmenting faculty compensation through thoughtful stewardship of school resources.

• Nurture and support the development of teachers, teacher residents, and staff in becoming ever more responsive to the needs of their students and in being effective in meeting those needs.

• Continue to use the facilities audit that has been completed to plan annually for maintenance and capital improvements, while responding to the unexpected facilities needs that arise.

• Be vigilant about opportunities to expand Arbor’s campus, especially to its East and North.

• Maintain and enhance Arbor’s model of a three-legged stool, in which trust and mutual effort are required on the part of the school, the child, and the parents.  

• Prepare the school for its fourth self-evaluation in its 40th year, 2028-29.

• Thoughtfully cultivate leadership in the faculty so as to tend the school’s ongoing leadership needs.